“You are not the young man I took you for, Tarbell, if you are not wringing your brain like a wet towel to make it tell you why anybody in New York should wish to see Nevada Short Line wreck bulletins in the newspapers.”
“That ain’t no joke, neither,” Tarbell admitted gravely, adding, “I been hopin’ maybe it would come out in the round-up.”
“Yes,” said Sprague, half-absently. “It will come out in the round-up.” And then, after a thoughtful pause, “Perhaps we’d better go over and relieve Mr. Maxwell’s mind. But first it wouldn’t be a bad idea to telephone the editor of The Tribune and ask him to send his railroad reporter down to Mr. Maxwell’s office. If you say that Mr. Maxwell will probably have a bit of first-page stuff for him, it won’t be necessary to go into details.”
Tarbell went into the hotel lobby to telephone, and afterward they crossed the plaza to the working head-quarters of the double division. Finding the superintendent’s office open and lighted but unoccupied, they went on to the despatcher’s room. In the public space outside of the counter railing three or four trainmen were grouped in front of the bulletin-board looking for their assignments on the night trains and thumbing the file of posted “General Orders.”
Behind the railing Connolly was sitting at his glass-topped wire-table with the train-sheet under his hand and the superintendent at his elbow. Over in the corner under his green-shaded electric bulb, Bolton, the sallow-faced car-record man, was fingering the keys of his type-writer.
Tarbell opened the gate in the railing to admit Sprague and himself. Maxwell looked up and nodded a welcome to his guest.
“Got tired of sitting it out alone, did you?” he said; and then, “I’ll be with you in a minute and we’ll go over to my office. I’m waiting to get Timanyoni’s report of the Limited.”
“Mrs. Maxwell is on the train?”
Maxwell nodded, and a moment later Connolly’s sounder clicked out Timanyoni’s report of the passing train. The fat despatcher was nervous. It showed in his rattling of the key as he O K’d the canyon station’s report, and again in a small disaster when, in reaching for his pen to make the train-sheet entry, he overset his ink-well.
“Well, I’m damned!” he grunted, snatching at the train-sheet and pushing the ink flood back with his free hand. Maxwell came to the rescue, and so did Tarbell; and a liberal application of blotters stopped the flood. But at the close of the incident Connolly’s hands were well blackened.